Sarah Kendzior

WWW 2018 Conference Speaker

Sarah Kendzior is best known for her critical take on the “prestige economy”, her reporting on St. Louis, her coverage of the 2016 election, and her academic research on authoritarian states in Central Asia.

Sarah’s best-selling essay collection, The View From Flyover Country is being released by Macmillan Publishers in April 2018, with new material on the Trump administration — how America got here, and where we’re going.

Sarah is currently an op-ed columnist for the Globe and Mail, where she focuses on US politics. She’s also am the US correspondent for the Dutch news outlet De Correspondent. Previously she was an op-ed columnist for Al Jazeera English, where she wrote about exploitation, particularly in higher education, the diminishing opportunities of America’s youth, and gentrification. She has also covered internet privacy, political repression, and how the media shape public perception. Her April 2013 article “The wrong kind of Caucasian” is the most popular AJE op-ed of all time.

She has also written for POLITICO, Quartz, Fast Company, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, The Diplomat, Marie Claire, The Atlantic, Medium, Radio Free Europe, POLITICO Europe, The Chicago Tribune, The Baffler, NBC News, Blue Nation Review, Alive Magazine, Ethnography Matters, The Common Reader, The New York Daily News, La Stampa, Slate, World Policy Journal, The Brooklyn Quarterly, Belt Magazine, Centre for International Governance Innovation, Teen Vogue, City AM, Opinio Juris, HRDCVR, World Politics Review and The New York Times.

In August 2013, Foreign Policy named Sarah one of “the 100 people you should be following on Twitter to make sense of global events”. In October 2013, St. Louis Magazine profiled her as one of 15 inspirational people under 35 in St. Louis. In September 2014, The Riverfront Times named her the best online journalist in St. Louis. In June 2017, St Louis Magazine named me the best journalist in St. Louis.

In addition to working as a journalist, Sarah is a researcher and scholar. She has a PhD in anthropology from Washington University in Saint Louis and an MA in Central Eurasian Studies from Indiana University. Most of her work focuses on the authoritarian states of the former Soviet Union and how the internet affects political mobilization, self-expression, and trust.

She’s frequently interviewed by the media and has been a guest on NPR, MSNBC, CBS, Al Jazeera, CBC News, BBC World Service and other broadcast outlets, and am a recurring guest on the MSNBC show “AM Joy”. She’s given talks all over the world as an invited speaker at academic conferences and forums on foreign policy, politics, education and technology.